Ramadan Reflection Day #24: Giving Voice to the Voiceless — Why We Need More Ayman Mohyeldins in the World

Ramadan Reflection Day #24: Giving Voice to the Voiceless — Why We Need More Ayman Mohyeldins in the World

By Imam Khalid Latif

I recently started following Ayman Mohyeldin on twitter, @AymanM. For those of you who don’t know him, he’s a Foreign Correspondent for NBC News and is reporting live from Gaza daily. Please keep the people their in your continued thoughts and prayers.

I don’t know Ayman Mohyeldin personally, but I think many of us can learn a lot from him. Ayman had witnessed the deaths of four Palestinian children playing soccer on the beach in Gaza — Ahed Atef Bakr, 10-years-old; Zakaria Ahed Bakr 10-years-old; Mohamed Ramez Bakr 11-years-old; and Ismael Mohamed Bakr nine-years-old. Ayman had been reporting on what he witnessed that day and many days prior before he was pulled out of Gaza unexpectedly by NBC. Speculation loomed over discomfort by the network due to his approach being too “Pro-Palestinian”, whatever that means. A social media campaign motivated by the hashtag #LetAymanReport grew in its popularity and lead to the eventual return of Ayman back to Gaza, where he is reporting and telling the Palestinian experience with hundreds of thousands of us all over the world. I think of what we, and so many others, would be missing had he decided to not pursue the field that he did. [Read more…]